It turns out that in the talent portion of this pageant, Michael Flynn chose to sing._________________"Now that we've determined that up to π angels can dance on the head of a pin, how do we determine the specific number (or fraction) of angels dancing?"
"What if angels from another pin engage them in melee combat?"

Saying they have the votes isn't the same as having the votes. They do keep changing the bill, so it's at least possible that they lose support. It'll be interesting if they hold the vote today, and then what happens. Reconciling to the house could be problematic.

So, in short - we are strongly hoping their incompetence exceeds their maliciousness?_________________Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

It won't be. They will just pass whatever the Senate passes. They aren't going to go back to give it another chance to fail in the Senate._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

So, in short - we are strongly hoping their incompetence exceeds their maliciousness?

That's been the theme so far. I'm pretty sure the Republicans finally have their act together on this one, but in fairness, I thought that about the final stages of the healthcare battle, too._________________I have a blogAlso a Discord channel

What I don't get is why even push things this far? The wealthiest people in this country could easily do absolutely nothing and still be making money hand over fist. If they paid the Reps just to prevent Dems from changing the good thing they have going while loosening 'other' restrictions to allow them to cheat the system they would still be exponentially more well off than the rest of America and they'd be that without as much fuss.

I mean I get that people are greedy, I do. I can be greedy sometimes, but wouldn't it be much easier just to continue to let their wealth pile up in unbelievable amounts as is instead of pushing things to the point of actually pissing off the very poor people who help keep them in power? It all just seems so damn unnecessary if all you want to do is just continue to be rich. I can understand the healthcare industry and it's various parts fighting tooth and nail to keep government from actually helping people in a way that doesn't net them bags of money but these corporations are already set even if things just don't change at all._________________The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
I've always thought it best to never hit a lady, but be sure to beat a bitch. -TOZ

In the short term, they make money. And they are all short-sighted bastards, because if they cared about the long term they'd be investing in renewable technologies and paying their workers living wages and in other ways aiming for sustainable profiteering. And the thing is, short term thinking can work for an uncomfortably long time.

In the long term, the Republicans will blame the consequences of their decisions on the Democrats...as usual. And they'll reap the political harvest of that. Even if they lose the presidency in 2020, they'll probably get it back again in 2024 - and use the massive deficit they've created to call for ending more social services._________________The Unpublishable - Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight | http://wikithulhu.com

I mean, lets not forget that literally the last recession was blamed on Obama at the key time that allowed them to gerrymander the house to ensure that your votes haven't mattered since and won't start matter until 2022.

And what caused the last recession? Capital Glut exasperated by Bush's multiple tax cuts.

When this inevitably blows up, all they have to do is have it blow up long enough for it to keep blowing up after a Democrat gets elected president in 2020 (or to delay the blow up until after that) and they can use that to blame democrats for it again just like always.

And remember, no one can undo these tax cuts until 2022, because republicans have already been decided to be the winners of 2018 and 2020 House elections._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

Historically, people did not ever give up taking everyone else's shit and keeping it for themselves. There were once people who owned everything and everyone within a few days to weeks travel of themselves, and they used that ownership to covet the shit out of their more distant neighbours "everything and everyone" like it was an existential crisis in need of some serious him or me right now at all times. To the point of bankrupting themselves (and thus, everyone) in the goal of taking slightly more of everything. It is a human failing, you cannot be rich enough to not want a lot more.

That particular extreme ended because once armies got reliable hand guns and mobile field cannon they needed an education to use them well enough to compete, educated men can read ideas like how they don't need to be owned at all, and once they hear it they will just up and murder everyone who tells them otherwise.

Or, you know, elect Trump to drain the swamp or whatever. Educated people can be misled, it's just wickedly complicated, and will often backfire spectacularly. But the rich, the next thing they will be needing from the Republicans after these huge tax cuts, is huge tax cuts. If their taxes were already zero, obviously they would need the government to tax poor people and give that money to rich people. Really._________________news://rec.games.frp.dnd

I will say that taxing poor people to pay rich people is consistent with 'trickle down economics'. I mean, clearly putting more money in the pockets of people who SPEND it rather than HOARD it is good for the economy. I mean, maybe if rich people were all launching new businesses it might work, but most of them stick that money in the NYSE and increase the value of businesses that already exist and don't generate much more in GDP. But IF trickle down economics worked (which it doesn't) then taxing the poor and funding the rich EVEN MORE would work even better.

Every fucking version of "people voted for Trump" anyone ever uses to make a point is somehow always wrong._________________

"DSMatticus" wrote:

Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

"FrankTrollman" wrote:

Really, the only thing the "my character can beat up your character" challenges ever do by presenting a clear and unambiguous beat down is to have the loser drop of the thread and pretend the challenge never happened.

"Frank Trollman" wrote:

But just because the character should have something defined into their play space that allows them to contribute to the situations that the game expects to demand of them, doesn't mean that those contributions should be exactly the same action every time. Indeed, at the point in which the other players can essentially memorize your character's actions and repeat them verbatim whether you're in the room or not - your design has failed.

Every fucking version of "people voted for Trump" anyone ever uses to make a point is somehow always wrong.

Among all educated people, Clinton has a significant lead. But if you confine it to just white educated people, Trump has a narrow lead. White people are basically terrible, and even people who knew better still voted for Trump slightly more than for Clinton.

Uneducated white people is of course where most of Trump's votes came from. But even educated white people are still willing to vote for racism a shocking amount of the time.

Obama radicalized racists by reminding them that black people exist for eight years._________________Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

rump got about the same white vote percentage as Romney. White people are basically just horrible. They vote for child molesters and sexual assaulters because they are on team racism and keeping the black man down is more important than having leaders who aren't literally rapists.

The entire Reagan Revolution is just white people voting to destroy their own social safety nets because they'd rather fucking starve than let black people eat.

For a lot of people, happiness depends of how they perceive other people's situation. Some people would rather prefer if everybody was starving but they had some stale bread than if everybody had food and they ate about the same thing as anyone else.

SOURCE: Brazil was finally getting over its chronical inequality problem and then the white middle class overwhelmingly supported booting out the Workers' Party from power (the process itself a mockery of justice). This same white middle class is being fucked sideways right now with the gutting of Brazil's welfare / workers' protection laws / public service and education (in a perverse system, middle class white people were the main public of our free public Universities). And still, people keep celebrating on Facebook that "Now lazy people don't get their food stamps".

Even if some of these horrible people are actually bots, the whole situation is disheartening as fuck. But we may as well accept that for some people, "Equality" is an objectively bad goal._________________@ @ Nockermensch

Koumei wrote:

After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.

The more player input you allow, the more interesting the characters are going to be. The more interesting the characters, the more fun everyone at the table is going to have.

RadiantPhoenix wrote:

TheFlatline wrote:

Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".

The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".

hyzmarca wrote:

Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.

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So basically, the same methods that alt-righters use to recruit. ("The housing market is bad because black people are criminals who are lowering property values. The reason your struggling to find employment is because mexicans are taking your jobs). And thus trick them into supporting things that they think will benefit them, but actually just fuck over everyone but the few at the top. Am i in the ballpark?_________________Check out my RP site!

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

deaddmwalking wrote:

The more player input you allow, the more interesting the characters are going to be. The more interesting the characters, the more fun everyone at the table is going to have.

RadiantPhoenix wrote:

TheFlatline wrote:

Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".

The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".

hyzmarca wrote:

Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.

There's also the teenager mentality - leave me alone, you're not the boss of me - of freedom.

The Right believes in negative freedoms (freedom from) but not positive ones (freedom to). As far as they're concerned, the only power to bestow freedom upon the citizenry that the government has is to leave them the hell alone. This is why health care is taking away people's freedom: to them, it requires paying in to a system without consent, and is thus making them do something they don't want, and is thus not free.

The Left believes in positive freedoms*. The government has the ability to pass laws that will allow more people to be productive citizens. Health care is a positive freedom because it will allow more people to stay healthy and get back to doing what they love to do. It enables people to be free from sickness, worry, death, etc so they can live.

As a parent, I find the Right's idea of freedom to be extremely naive and utterly non-functional. If I raised my child that way, he would grow up to be an idiot (other people might get lucky enough to not require help with their children, but since mine's a special needs kid, that flew out the window the minute I got him help so he could do well in school).

*Ideally, there would be a mix of positive freedoms and negative. You don't want the government to be a helicopter parent, but you don't want it to be neglectful, either. I believe that the Left has that mix._________________My son makes me laugh. Maybe he'll make you laugh, too. Oh, hey! There's now a Minecraft Edition of GODzookery!

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There's also a bit of myopia and taking things for granted and different people using different defintions of the same word.

As a general rule, the middle class don't consider the social programs that they benefit from to be welfare. They consider these things to be basic services that the government is just supposed to provide for people.

Unemployment insurance, disability, these are things that they wouldn't actually consider cutting.

When they think of welfare, they're thinking about free money for people who just don't want to work. Which doesn't actually exist, but that's part of the delusion and the propaganda.

There are, in fact, a rather large number of people who said that they wanted to repeal Obamacare, but keep the ACA.

Because Obamacare is terrible, and the worst thing to happen to America since slavery, but the ACA is really useful thing that helps them pay for their medical insurance.

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